


The Old and the Keanu

by saltwaterselkie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Banter, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Humor, Immortality, Oneshot, Short One Shot, The Keanu-Reeves-is-immortal joke given Old-Guard-fic form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25556923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: As it turns out, there's one immortal Nile hasn't yet met...(His name is Keanu)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 125





	The Old and the Keanu

**Author's Note:**

> Please y'all, bear with me. This is not in any way to be taken seriously, nor is it what I would consider my best work. I just... I had to.

Nile’s dreams were confusing that night.

Apparently, dreams of other immortals could come in fits and starts. She’d learned this before the team had recovered Quynh; Nile hadn’t dreamt of Quynh _every_ time she fell asleep, a fact for which she was grateful. She could only handle so much drowning in her dreams before she developed an aversion to water.

Nile still didn’t understand how Quynh was mostly-sane after all that, but she had decided long ago to let sleeping dogs (and questions) lie. And Nile’s dreams of Quynh were beside the point; she was dreaming of a new immortal, it seemed. A man.

She woke up with the vaguest details caught at the edges of her vision. It was like when you looked at the sun and its afterimage showed up on the backs of your eyelids when you blinked; the man was there, though she only saw black hair, knuckles, a tailored suit.

The team was staying in an Airbnb in Northern Italy, a quaint little place with an attic room that Nile had immediately claimed. She liked being in high-up places, always had. She’d sometimes wondered if she would have been better as a sniper than a foot soldier, but it hadn’t been her place to try to change her assignment. Especially not with such good friends on the ground.

She came racing down the rickety old stairs of the place, rocketing into the kitchen. Joe and Nicky were squeezing fresh orange juice; Andy was standing in the hallway, a basket of fresh bread looped around her elbow. She lifted it with a nod towards Nile. “Eager for the market wares?”

“Or the orange juice,” Joe cut in. “We’re really quite good at getting it to come out right.”

“Though not very efficient,” Andy said, tilting her sunglasses down to shoot him a look. “Given that the last time you tried I caught you making out instead of juicing.”

Nicky shrugged. “Sue us.”

“Y’all are missing out on my news,” Nile interrupted, her thoughts still running a mile a minute, “I dreamed of a _new immortal_.”

Andy shifted on her heels. “A new immortal?” She glanced at Joe and Nicky. “Wouldn’t we have picked up on that?”

Nicky nodded. “Probably. But we can’t know for sure. Tell us, Nile.”

Nile felt suddenly worried that she had imagined the whole thing. That she hadn’t truly dreamt of a new immortal but had mixed up a normal dream with one of more significance. She shrugged. “I dunno, it was a dude with black hair?”

“Oh,” said Andy, Nicky, and Joe in unison, then glanced at each other with various amused chuckles and soft smiles.

“That’s easy,” Joe said with a lopsided grin. “You saw Keanu Reeves.”

Nile had been through many surprising realizations during the past seven months, not least of which was the discovery that she was a freaking _immortal_. This, however, took the cake.

“Keanu Reeves.”

“Yup,” Joe said.

“John Wick Keanu Reeves?”

“That’s the one,” Nicky confirmed.

Quynh’s voice came from behind Nile. “Are we talking about Reeves?”

Andy grinned. “But of course. Nile dreamed about him.”

“Oh. Duh.” Quynh nodded like it was obvious. It was the opposite of obvious to Nile.

They’d talked a bit about how the dreams worked – after Nile had dreamt of Quynh, she’d learned that the dreams stopped for good once the immortals dreaming of each other met. That was why she no longer dreamt of Booker, even when he was off somewhere none of them knew. And why Quynh was no longer a feature in her dreams – or, rather, her nightmares.

But if Quynh was unsurprised by this turn of events…

“Wait, you’ve _met_ Keanu Reeves? All of you?”

Quynh nodded. “He was immortal before the witch trials.”

Andy came over to loop an arm around Quynh’s waist. Quynh stole a roll out of the breadbasket with a muttered apology that fooled no one, given that it was joined with a smirk. “I know I told you it was only us,” Andy said, addressing Nile, “but Reeves doesn’t really _count_. He’s the outlier.”

“He’s not a fighter,” Joe put in, tossing an orange peel into the compost bin. “Never was. Which goes against the grain for all the rest of us.”

“If you ask me, he’s a mistake,” Nicky said. “Whatever or whoever made _this_ happen to us wasn’t thinking straight. So Reeves got in on it.”

Andy’s brow furrowed. “It’s not entirely fair that he can get away with all that publicity,” she said. “Current theory is that he can only do it because of the meme – you know.”

“Everyone jokes that he’s immortal, so anyone saying it seriously would be ridiculed,” Joe explained. “Smart, if you put it that way.”

Nile thought she’d seen Keanu Reeves in a couple movies – she’d never been a huge screen junkie, but she was aware of the big flicks. She knew who he was, at least. Famous. And if _she_ was dreaming of _him_ …

“Wait. Keanu Reeves is dreaming of me?”

“Oh, he’s gonna be so pissed,” Joe said with a grin directed at Nicky. “Remember when we had to meet up with him all those years ago? We interrupted that one shoot and he was all ‘ _you’re going to attract the wrong attention_.’ He was right, of course, but still.”

“Don’t worry, Nile, he’s chill,” Andy said, reassurance in her tone. “Joe’s overblowing it all.”

“He was perfectly kind when I met him,” Quynh said. “A real gentleman.”

Nile processed this all fairly quickly. That was when she came to the next realization. “I have to _meet him?_ ”

Andy raised and eyebrow. “Well,” she said, “you don’t _have_ to. But it is highly recommended. Unless you’d prefer the dreams continue.”

“No.” Nile shook her head – probably more emphatically than she needed to. “No, no, this has gotta stop.”

And – that being the case – meeting Keanu Reeves was exactly what Nile did. They met up in a not-so-fancy restaurant, the both of them sporting baseball caps and sunglasses. He was nicer than she’d expected him to be.

All told, she only had one way to put it. It had been a remarkably strange experience, and one she was happy never to need to repeat.

Still, even though she knew it was silly… knowing that there was someone out there, another immortal, who didn’t yet match up to the rest of the Guard in terms of pure experience… it made her feel less lonely.

Though she would never admit that, not even to herself.


End file.
